Woman's Own

My life was a LIE

Knocking on the door of the London terrace, I felt breathless with excitement. After decades of searching for my biological father, I was about to meet the man I was certain was his brother – my uncle. ‘This is it,’ I thought as he welcomed me inside. ‘I’ve finally found my family’. Yet, within a week, that illusion had been completely shattered, and all I’d uncovered was yet more of my mother’s cruel lies.

‘I told myself he’d come and rescue me’

Looking back on my childhood, it’s hard not to feel resentment. Born in October 1968, I was my mother Christine’s eldest child and, from an early age, I realised our relationship wasn’t like the sweet, tender friendship between most mothers and daughters

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